Chloride metallurgy has become increasingly attractive in the manufacture of metals because of its versatility in effecting separation from ores, or from valuable metals whose chlorides are volatile. Because of the inherent simplicity of such treatment and the speed of the important reactions there result corresponding fundamental processing economics. Further, development of new construction materials have permitted development of equipment to economically handle the chlorine and metal chlorides. Thus, there recently have been announced two new processes for the making of aluminum metal through chloride metallurgy. The first is the Toth process, in which the aluminum chloride, formed by chlorination of clay or other aluminous materials, is reacted with manganese metal to form aluminum metal and manganese chloride. The other process is the Alcoa process where the aluminum chloride is electrolyzed after admixture with sodium chloride. In addition to these new processes, intensive effort is now being concentrated by the Japanese on a process to make nickel by chlorination of ores containing only fractional percentages of nickel.
In addition to recovery of major components of ores, chlorination has the further inherent advantage of easy recovery of minor but valuable components. As an example, aluminum or phosphate ores commonly contain a small but very valuable percentage of other constituents, including uranium. Costs of chlorination to recover uranium alone would be prohibitive, however, recovery of the uranium as a by-product would be very attractive. For these reasons the subject invention, which relates to chlorination of aluminum phosphate ores, is of a great deal of importance to the aluminum and phosphate industries. Through use of the instant invention the aluminum phosphate deposits of the Southeastern United States, those of Senegal, Africa, and similar world-wide deposits can be very advantageously utilized by this invention to make aluminum, phosphates, uranium and other valuable products. This process has a particular significance especially for the United States and those other countries which do not have indigenous bauxite deposits suitable for aluminum production through the conventional Bayer-Hall process and/or phosphate deposits suitable for fertilizer production by currently known processes. In the United States, for instance, there are no substantial domestic bauxite reserves suitable for conventional processing. Therefore, the domestic aluminum industry is virtually entirely dependent on imported bauxite for making aluminum, which is obviously an unhealthy situation relative to economic, industural and military security.
Through use of the subject inventive process, vast domestic reserves of aluminum phosphate may be utilized to economically provide two of the most essential commodities in national life, aluminum metal and phosphate fertilizer. In addition, minor but important by-products like uranium may be recovered. This is accomplished using ore which has theretofore been considered essentially valueless, and in addition, the ratio of aluminum to P.sub.2 O.sub.5 in aluminum phosphate is fortuitously just about the same as is the ratio of the demand of aluminum metal to phosphate fertilizers in the United States, so this one process could advantageously supply both vital domestic needs.